Monthly Archives: February 2019

Feb 21 2019
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332wednesday12

#TechnologistModule @eCampusOntario

Visual Explanation:

For my multimedia assignment I focused Technologist Module of eCampus Ontario’s open PD modules and created a Twitter essay to summarize module and give readers a quick overview of digital literacies and technology integration in classrooms. After providing an overview I asked the reader in a Twitter poll to rank how comfortable they are with integrating digital literacies. Then I go through and dedicate each tweet in the thread to different tabs in the module. First I explained what is meant by ‘digital literacies,’ and then I explained the design-thinking approach. These tweets provide a basis for the technologist module design thinking process of empathy, define, ideate, prototype and connect. For the rest of the thread I described each of these processes. The second last tweet is a checklist of what the reader should be able to do after going through the technologist module. I felt like this was important to include because it provides the reader the opportunity to understand the end goals of the module before physically going through the module. At the end of the thread I used another poll to rank how comfortable the reader felt with the idea of digital literacies after going through my Twitter essay. Throughout the thread I incorporated a variety of pictures and gifs to keep the reader entertained and for it to be visually appealing.

Reflection:

I have always found modules to be generally user friendly and easy to follow. When I first looked at the eCampus Ontario’s Technologist Module it was in a critical way to critique how accommodating this site could be for differing abilities. Through doing this I discovered the limitations that this site could have depending on student needs, and therefore this set up is not a perfect model for every student. Personally, I still enjoy the module and I would consider using this type of set-up with my class depending on the needs of the students in my class. As I was going through and summarizing the information in my Twitter essay, I noticed a number of things. I found the information in the module very well laid out and easy to sum up for my Twitter essay.

follow for funny tweets – click this picture to be brought to my profile 

One challenge that I did not anticipate was the limited amount of characters in each tweet. As a twitter user, I found a big difference between 140 characters to 280 characters and so I was expecting fewer issues with space. I ended up summarizing much more than expected. The benefit to this, is that I feel as though my thread turned out much easier to read because I was not able to be wordy in my tweets.

 

Multimedia Assignment:

Feb 21 2019
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332wednesday12

Open this for ‘Openess’

The technologist module from Ontario Extend is a free resource that provides teachers with a guide to choose, apply and integrate technologies into their classrooms. The main purpose of the module is to teach educators how to design and implement a technological tool that effectively addresses learning challenges. This is one aspect of digital literacy, which is defined as the ability to locate, use, summarize, communicate and construct clear information through various digital platforms, ultimately creating new knowledge. This is an ongoing process that requires the use of design thinking. Design thinking allows us to reach into our ‘designer toolkit’ to find and use technologies that fix learners challenges. This is a human-centered approach because the people that will benefit from the task at hand are directly being involved in the process of designing and implementing it. There are many approaches to this form of thinking that helps us as educators properly evaluate and integrate digital technology. This involves: empathizing for your students and fully understanding what it is they need; defining the specific challenge that the learner has; evaluating ideal qualities and characteristics of how you can address this challenge; creating a prototype that, at the most basic level, involves bringing your technology forth to your users and getting valuable feedback; and also finding ways to connect technology to your curriculum.

While creating my artifact I could not help but realize that the form of visual I choose to create was not one that used technology directly. I created a mind map which includes pictures and words to show the main ideas of the technologist module. Although my mind map was made with coloured pencils and paper, I used many technological resources to create my artifact. I used Google to find pictures that I could use as a template for my drawing, and also researched many of my ideas I used in my drawing (falling down the internet rabbit hole). Technology is and always will be all around us and is just getting more prevalent each and every day. This is why we as our future educators need to embrace modules like the one provided to us by Ontario Extend, because they give us a framework to how we can continuously use technology and design thinking to improve the struggles that students can be affected by. Through understanding the challenges that learners have we can use this information to research important characteristics certain technologies have that can improve their learning. This module is perfect for teachers who may not be as technological savvy, because it gives them a perfect outline to follow in order to integrate and find technology like a professional.

Feb 21 2019
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332wednesday12

Getting Techy With It

After exploring Ontario Extend’s Technologist Module in considerable depth, I chose to reflect on its contents in the form of a twitter essay. I’ve used this medium before, and I really did want to use something new this time, but every time I started on a new medium I felt I wasn’t able to to convey my thoughts as well as a twitter essay allows me to. I like the fact that a twitter essay forces me to make bold, concise points for each tweet, making for a simple yet effective train of thoughts explaining the overall article or in this case, module. I also really love adding GIFS to each tweet as it ads a sense of humour, which is something I tend to gravitate to.

After going through the module in class, I thought I had a pretty good grasp of the major concepts behind integrating new technology tools in the classroom. When I took the time at home to really navigate the module and follow all of the links, I realized there was a lot more information than I had thought. I really did find myself down a rabbit hole on the internet. That being said, I found a lot of valuable information regarding the process of introducing new tech tools in the classroom. I really like the breakdown of ‘design-thinking’ into 5 key elements as it make its much easier to understand. I found it really easy to separate the elements and give each one their own tweet or two, allowing me to expose the most critical information for each concept. While exploring these key elements in greater detail, I really felt a theme starting to emerge. This really shouldn’t come as much of a shock to anyone in this program, but the focal point of tech integration in our classrooms has to be our students. Yes, we need to find a tool that works for us, and that we are comfortable with, but at the end of the day our students needs are our main concern. Whether it’s gathering ideas from your students before you even start brainstorming (empathize), or giving the students a chance to interact and explore the tool after the prototype stage, the entire process has to be student-centred.

Gaining student feedback is essential, and I found it to be a very effective practice during my time in practicum. Although I didn’t allow the students to call all the shots, I definitely listened to what they had to say after quickly realizing that sticking strictly to my lesson plan was not going to work in my favour. For example, my task during the first week of practicum 2 was to run a basketball unit, simple enough, right? The first 2 or 3 days went okay, but I quickly realized that a lot of the boys were getting bored. They would tell me every day they didn’t want to play basketball but I stuck to my guns and dragged through my drills and games. When I had a talk with my AT about the lacking motivation levels, he made a suggestion that was so simple, yet made so much sense. Give them a day off. All they ever wanted to do was play dodgeball, so I decided to split up my basketball lesson with a day of dodgeball and other various games. They loved it, and seemed to be a little happier when returning to basketball the next, although not entirely thrilled. The message here is that we need to hear our students concerns, and cater to them whenever possible.

I don’t consider myself to be a tech wiz by any means, and I really found this module broke down the process toward successful integration in a way that I could follow. I find that 3 of the 5 key elements in design-thinking are things we already do on a daily basis with our students. Empathy is part of the job, as educators we have take our students needs into account every single day, every single class whether we are using tech tools or not. Defining specific challenges that are present for the students in our classes is also something we must do on the regular, and of course, we are always connecting the lessons we teach to our curriculum. The two unique elements presented in the module are ideate and prototype. These are specific to creating new technological tools, and I thought the module did a great job of explaining these concepts and how to use execute them purposefully. I also found this module really helped me reform my own definition of digital literacy, and what it means within the confounds of a classroom.

Feb 21 2019
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332thursday10

Technology Use in Classrooms, Here We Come!

Growing up, there was not a lot of technology in the classroom. There was the old-style TV, VHS and DVD player as well as a smartboard that many teachers just used as a white board for their projector to show their notes or videos. As I have graduated from high school and now onto teacher’s college, technology has come a long way. Technology has become a part of the classroom whether it be Kahoot, Mentimeter, PhET, Gizmos and so much more. Technology has become a part of our daily lives and as educators we need to find appropriate ways to use technology in the classroom.

A picture of the Technologist Design Thinking Process

Looking back at the eCampus Technologist module, there are steps that must be taken for technology use that relates to the curriculum. The module first discusses digital literacy which talks about learning to use technology in a safe and responsible manner. It is an ongoing process where the educator and students will learn and develop techniques for them to use, summarize, evaluate, create and communicate information with others by using technology. Coming up with ways to incorporate technology in the classroom involves digital thinking, which is human-centered. It involves designing a product that can solve a problem in the classroom. This includes a 5-step process: (1) empathize, (2) define, (3) ideate, (4) prototype and (5) connect. Each step involves working towards the goal of incorporating technology into the classroom that relates to the curriculum. The first step empathize involves placing yourself in the shoes of your students and figuring out the challenges of the classroom. You need to understand the issues before you can solve them. The second step define involves narrowing down the topics to a specific problem that you can work to solve in the classroom. The third step ideate involves brainstorming ideas that you can use for the technological tools you want to demonstrate in the classroom. Prototype involves creating a demo or rough draft of the product where you will be able to experiment with the tool, share the ideas for feedback and finally refine the idea in order to implement it in the classroom. Finally, the final step is connect which involves making connections between the technology and the curriculum.

As I was first going through the module, I did not understand the relation to how this relates to the classroom. As I read through the steps, I understand how each step is taken to make sure that you are solving the problem of using technology and making sure you relate it to the curriculum. Looking back at the workshop we had in class, a lot of the tools that my classmates showed can be very useful in the classroom. For example, with a Biology and Chemistry teachable, using a website like PhET is very useful to understand concepts that may not be understood by paper and pen. It involves the transformation aspect of the SAMR model especially when it comes to the movement of atoms and visualizing a lot of microscopic aspects of Science labs. It gives the students an ability to learn a concept in a visual manner as compared to just explaining it or attempting to draw it out. They can learn by making certain adjustments and see if that affects the results. This is just one example as how the use of technology can help explain the curriculum.

For this multimedia reflection, I decided to do a Twitter Essay. The very first reflection was a mindmap that was done on paper and pen and the second reflection was on an infographic so I thought ending the reflections with a Twitter Essay would be interesting. I enjoyed using Twitter to create my reflection as it made me summarize my thoughts in 140 characters. I found myself writing a lot more sometimes and having to go back and shrink my thoughts. I loved being able to include GIFS for all my tweets that related to each topic. At the beginning of the semester, was not a big fan of Twitter but after creating an account and using it in the classroom, I feel more comfortable using the platform. Using the link attached on blackboard, I was able to make a thread of all the tweets instead of making individual tweets. I have attached a copy of the thread at the bottom of this reflection. I hope you enjoy going through my tweets as much as I did making them!

Happy reading!

Feb 20 2019
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332wednesday12

Bringing tech to the classroom in unique ways

 

For my final multimedia reflection, I decided to do a Twitter essay. In the previous two reflections, I did other platforms and this time rather than doubling down on a platform I decided to try another platform type in order to expand my learning and education of technology in the classroom. My Twitter essay was in response to the Ontario Extend article on technologist Scenario where it talked about how to properly use different tools in our classroom. This response I thought was very important to becoming a better teacher because it allowed me to see the proper steps in order to properly integrate technology into the classroom. It also has allowed me to understand and comprehend exactly what needs to be done as an educator. I thought that the most important part of students knowing how to use technology in the classroom was being able to use it, rather in the article it says the redefine is the most important part for students to understand exactly how to use and understand the technology we as teachers bring into the classroom. I believe that to be technological aware of what is going on in our classrooms we always need to be up to date on the latest technological advancements in our classrooms prior to teaching older outdated platforms to our students.

One part of the eCampus site that really intrigued me was the part about empathy and how love is important when creating these different platforms. Each platform according to the article is made so everybody will understand it and it has to be understood by everybody in order for it to properly work in the classroom.

the link is to my twitter essay for anybody who does not follow me on there. Click on twitter to see the entire essay.

Feb 20 2019
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332wednesday12 Link

About to Change Future Generations


Every student we encounter as educators will have a wide variety of strengths and weaknesses when it comes to digital literacy. Digital literacy is the ability to use communication and information technologies to find, evaluate, create and communicate information. As we assess our teaching strategies, it’s extremely important to promote open education that includes Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as mentioned in the Technologist Module. We need to focus on integrating technological tools that can be used in a variety of ways to accommodate each student’s needs. Student-centred learning should be the basis of how we choose to teach the curriculum to attempt to reduce the barriers in our student’s education and address their strengths in the process. If we can create flexible learning environments we will be able to accommodate all individual learning differences. Where do we begin? Design thinking empowers people to develop new solutions to current problems. We need to analyze each student with empathy and begin to learn what these students need. What challenges are they experiencing that can be resolved with the use of technology? After we define the learner’s challenges, we must start identifying features of how technology can address these challenges and which technological tool could best be used to accommodate these issues. It’s important to consider the following questions while choosing a tool; how easy is it to use? Is it costly/ timely? Is there security/privacy settings? Etc. This is when differentiation instruction must be incorporated. This is when we address the needs of our learners and specifically address the concerns of each student.  When a technological tool has been chosen, it needs to be experimented with our students. This will allow the students to see what works, what doesn’t and what improvements should be made. With the feedback of the students we are able to redefine the prototype that they experimented with. It’s important to explain how this tool connects to the learning outcomes of the curriculum.

I believe design thinking is very important to incorporate into our teaching practises. Most of us have all experienced the same teaching approaches; copying information from a power point, memorizing many week’s worth of material, then regurgitating it on paper and that’s how our intelligence is defined. We are not addressing the strengths of our students and giving them a fair opportunity to develop to their full potential.  Our assignment of promoting an educational tool we were unfamiliar with, was an eye opener that followed the modified learning explained in this module. The assignment enlightened us of how we could use these new tools in the classroom to promote differentiated instruction. For example, Padlet can be used to help those who don’t necessarily enjoy speaking in front of a crowd, or those that are limited in expressing creativity. It’s so important that we address ALL intelligences and create a flexible learning environment for every student we teach.

Feb 20 2019
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Uncategorized

Making Use of Technology

Technology has come a long way in the last decade and has made our lives easier in so many different ways. As technology has become more prevalent in our lives it only makes sense that we incorporate it into the classroom. The only problem with trying to incorporate technology into the classroom is that many teachers are not sure how to do it. That is why Extend has created a great site that breaks down how teachers can incorporate technology into their lessons.

Using the infographic below I briefly explain what the main takeaways from Extend’s site are. It is an infographic that allows the reader to quickly gather what some of the main points are from the site and how they can start incorporating technology into the classroom. I decided to use an infographic because they are a great visual to help catch the readers eye. I also choose to use it since it allowed me to clearly write down and show the steps necessary to start using technology in the classroom.

Upon going through the website and participating in the modules that Extend had I gained a few new tips for ways of making use of technology in the classroom. First of all when reading the articles I related what I was reading back to the SAMR Model I had learned about before. Fromm the article they talked about how using technology needs to be useful for the users. When I was reading this I thought of how by using SAMR we want to try and aim for more than just substitution. So if I want to incorporate technology into my classroom I want to try and use that technology to enhance the learning experience or make it easier for my students to solve problems by using technology. Another aspect from the Extend website I found could be very useful for someone trying to use technology is the prototype step. This prototype steps talks about designing, sharing, and refining your use of technology. I think this is a very important step for new teachers trying to use technology. By understanding that the technology might not be perfect the first time you trying using it, helps the teacher not get discouraged when the design does not work. Understanding that taking advice from users will help the teacher to rethink the technology and improve its use in the lesson is a key component. Overall I think this website clearly lays out how to begin using technology in the classroom. There are also many useful links embedded within the Extend website itself. Now if you just want a brief outline of what is on the Extend website then checkout my infographic below!

 

Feb 20 2019
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332wednesday12

Want to Integrate Technology to Address Differentiation? LOOK NO FURTHER!

My multimedia reflection revolves around eCampus’ Technologist module, which addresses the idea of differentiation and successfully using technology to address students’ specific needs. The first section of the module has to do with digital literacy, and it encourages readers to come up with their own definition after reading. Through this, the definition of digital literacy I concluded with was ” making an effort to remain up to date on the most beneficial technological resources for meaningfully interacting with specific types of students”. I came up with this definition because I feel as if it encompasses everything the module advocates, especially with regard to design-thinking. The module is heavily influenced by this idea of design-thinking, a term that more or less refers to the process of individuals who will benefit from the end product partaking in its creation. In the classroom, this can be a powerful tool as students attempt to solve complex problems that may exist in their specific scenario. Design-thinking is broken down into five sections: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Connect. Essentially, these five steps highlight the importance of putting yourselves in students shoes, identifying problems that may exist, creating potential solutions to these issues, testing these methods within the classroom while searching for constructive feedback, and ensuring that the technological tool you choose to utilize connects to curriculum expectations. After considering all these steps as a whole, I could not really determine which one I felt was most important because they all complement each other in the journey toward the final goal of successfully using technology to address differentiation. Despite this, I think connecting to curriculum could hold some more weight in terms of actually applying these methods into the classroom. As the article states, if what you’re doing is not relevant to curriculum, you might want to rethink your strategy/tool. This is something that some teachers might forget when using technology in the classroom. A tool may seem really cool to incorporate, but ensuring actual learning with respect to your subject area occurs is paramount.

Something that really stood out to me was the SECTIONS model, which is a step-by-step process to follow when choosing a technological tool. Before anything, students are prioritized first, and this is something that resonated with me deeply. I appreciate how the model and the module as a whole value students’ wants and needs before anything else because I feel as if this is something that some teachers lack when designing their lesson plans. If more teachers navigated through this module and attempted to incorporate the elements that are presented, learning would be a much more enjoyable and rewarding experience from K-12 and beyond.

 

As with my first multimedia reflection, I chose to go with a Twitter essay in my response to the information presented. Although we are encouraged to branch out and try different technological tools (as I did in the second one), I feel as if I can best present my ideas within the Twitter essay format. There are so many ways you can get across the main points of the module: writing about it, implementing polls, adding GIFs, and scattering pictures throughout the essay. I did enjoy using Coggle in my last reflection to try something new, but I did find it a bit limiting in terms of condensing a wide variety of ideas into small headings and subheadings/sentences. The way the module is set up is almost perfect for a Twitter essay since it more or less follows a suggested process to follow, which is rather easy to convey into tweets. This may be our last multimedia reflection of the year (sadly), but I definitely encourage all teachers to obtain at least some literacy with respect to Twitter as it can be a useful tool to incorporate into the classroom, especially in relation to class discussions. Without further ado, here is my Twitter essay. Enjoy!

 

Feb 20 2019
4 Comments
332thursday10

Beware the Link Wormhole

Before going through the Technologist Module by Ontario Extend, I did not fully understand how to appropriately technology into my teaching. I have definitely attempted using technology through the use of Kahoot, graphing calculators, and GeoGebra, but I am still learning on the most effective methods for incorporation. This technologist module was very helpful in facilitation of my learning regarding this topic, and lead to the production of this infographic. The main take-away that I got from this module was that we need to find ways to prioritize design thinking and digital literacy. Design thinking involves finding out what the problems are, and then creating ways to use technology to ideally solve them, while also still connecting to the curriculum.

I started the infographic by discussing what digital literacy encompasses and what design thinking is. I then went into the important parts of design thinking and also the five parts of the process of design thinking. These five ideas went into a bit more detail later on in the infographic. I then lastly touched on my opinions regarding the topics of the module and the module itself, which will either have been discussed above or will be discussed below.

One thing that really stood out for me during the module was the idea that those in the middle of the bell curve, tend to have difficulties describing the problems affecting them, but those on the two extremes do not. This stood out because as a future teacher, it may mean that the students on the extremes get noticed, but those in the middle may fall through the cracks. It opened my eyes to the idea that I may need to pay more attention to my students at the middle as opposed to my extremes when discussing problems or other class concepts.

This is the second time that I produced an infographic for a multimedia reflection, and it was much easier the second time around. I was much more comfortable with Piktochart, and was able to utilize its features much more effectively than the last time. Last time I spent a lot more time fiddling around with trying to insert images or graphics, but this time I could quickly search for graphics and move them around with ease. This can kind of relate to the module in the sense that I am better able to use this technology, and increase my digital literacy surrounding this website, especially regarding the creativity and innovation subcategory of digital literacy.

I tend to have mixed feelings about online learning environments, whether they be courses, modules, or webinars. I enjoy them because I am usually able to work at my own pace which can also benefit some types of learners. However, some learners need more structure than the independent aspects online courses offer and would not benefit from this. They may even become sucked into the “link wormhole” where they keep travelling from link to link, and lose all sense of what they are supposed to be learning. I also find that I can sometimes lose focus when the learning is so independent, and realize that other learners may struggle with that as well. Overall, however, I do find that online modules can definitely be a beneficial resource, and I really enjoyed the layout of this one in particular.

Feb 20 2019
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Uncategorized

Technologist – Now is the time

The Technologist module, designed by ecampusontario https://extend.ecampusontario.ca/technologist-module-checklist/ is a free resource designed for educators who wish to become a “technologist”. Personally, I learned a lot from this module as many of my friends know I am not the most tech-savvy. The module is a step-by-step tool to help educators gain the basic knowledge they would need to implement more technology integration into their classroom. With the exponential growth that is the technology field, plus technology’s  integration into the lives of most students in North America, it seems more important than ever before that teachers are digitally literate. One thing I really liked about this module is it made sure that teachers think of the students specific needs before they designed a plan to integrate technology. Through personal experience I have learned many teachers try to integrate technology just because they feel like they have to, because it is some popular, rather than because it could improve student learning. The latter of course, being the important factor. There are many lessons that exist that can be highly effective without technology integration and I think it is important educators ensure they are integrating technology for the right reasons, which this module certainly stresses as well.

The module taught me not only more about digital literacy, but also design thinking, which was a term I previously had very little experience with. From the module I learned design thinking is a student-centred approach where students find the solution to a problem through feedback. Since it is a human-centred approach, the person who designs the artifact is the one who benefits from it, this is good for education as we want our students to benefit from the artifacts they are asked to create. Following the steps in the module can help teachers learn design-thinking, and more about how to acquire stronger digital literacy skills, which they can then use to increase student learning.

Feel free to click on the following link to read my twitter essay on the subject. https://twitter.com/jaredhansen321/status/1098260077436420103

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